Enrollment in the humanities is down at Harvard College—and
nationally, the number of bachelor’s degrees in the field has fallen by half from
1966 to 2010, from 14 percent to 7 percent of all degrees taken. The news media
periodically highlight such statistics and raise the cry that the humanities
are in decline, perhaps reflecting diminished relevance to contemporary
society. Theories offered to explain
the trend include preprofessionalism among students on financial aid worried
about a tough economic climate and technological gadgetry’s relentless
challenge to sustained observation and reflection.

To tackle this
challenge, dean of arts and humanities Diana Sorensen asked an
interdisciplinary steering committee to examine the role of the humanities at
Harvard. In the 18 months since, the committee’s work grew to include 40
faculty members who formed several working groups, including one focused on
strengthening the undergraduate humanities curriculum, and another that
examined the role and purpose of humanistic learning in the academy. Those
groups have now released reports detailing their findings.

“The point of an undergraduate education in the humanities,”
Sorensen explained in an interview, “is to develop habits of mind, to develop a
sense of how to reason rigorously, how to express ideas in a compelling way,
and how to write well. And then to have at your disposal the categories through
which to approach complex problems. We want to make that clear, and then find a
way to draw students into our courses.”

The working group, co-chaired by Loker professor of English
James Simpson and professor of philosophy Sean Kelly, explains how the
humanities contribute to the University’s mission, including a history of
humanistic learning that “also attempts to define how humanists think,”
Sorensen said. The report,The Teaching
of the Arts and Humanities at Harvard College: Mapping the Future, delves into
the intellectual traditions within the humanities, including their important
role in critiquing society and imagining alternative futures, a quality that has
made the field, throughout history, the report says, “the scourge of a culture or its greatest hope.” But the report
also includes “a lot of data about students,” says Sorensen. Among the data-driven
findings: the percentage of humanities concentrators fell during the last 60
years from 24 to 17 percent, dropping between 2003 and 2012 from 21 to 17
percent. When history concentrators are factored in (history is considered part
of the humanities, although at Harvard it is technically in the division of
social sciences), the decline in concentrators since 1954 is even more
precipitous, falling from 36 to 20 percent of undergraduates.

But the report also says that “two standard arguments” raised against the humanities—that the decline
is Harvard-specific and caused by
financial aid—do not withstand scrutiny. Peer institutions are experiencing
identical declines, and financial aid has little impact on what concentrations undergraduates
ultimately choose. What the data show instead is that, during the last eight
years,

more than half of students who
as pre-Freshmen indicate an intention to concentrate in a Humanities
concentration end up in a different division: 50% graduate in a social science,
27% in either Government (11%), Psychology (8%), or Economics (8%). Students
stating an intention to concentrate in a Humanities discipline are much less
loyal to that intention at concentration declaration (57% exodus) than students
stating an intention to concentrate in a social science (19% exodus).

These negative figures direct
humanists’ attention to two areas in particular: the freshman experience, which
is where we lose a striking number of students who matriculate with an
intention to concentrate in a Humanities discipline; and the social sciences,
who draw our intenders in striking numbers.

On a more positive note, the report states that student
satisfaction with their concentration is consistently higher in the humanities than
in other divisions, and that 93 percent of students who declare a humanities
concentration remain faithful to that choice. The conclusion? “We have less a ‘crisis’ in the humanities in Harvard College”, the report states, “…than a
challenge and opportunity…”; and “we should arrest and reverse the decline of
concentrator numbers by focusing on freshmen.”

The curricular working group, led by professor of Slavic languages and literatures and of literature Julie
Buckler and Reischauer Institute professor of cultural history Shigehisa
Kuriyama, has tried,
Sorensen said, “to think about the curriculum as a platform to create courses
that undergraduates care about: how do you build a meaningful life, what do you
think about war, or what is the meaning of love?” At the same time, such a
curriculum should “forge ties that connect departments” to “make us as faculty
feel less siloed, and to give our students a sense of a social and academic
collective to which they can belong.”

The group has made practical recommendations, based on their
colleagues’ data, by focusing on two central challenges: reinvigorating student
recruitment, particularly during the freshman year; and improving integration
within the division of arts and humanities.

To attract student interest during the initial semesters of
undergraduate study, the report calls for new gateway courses that will offer a
clear point of entry into arts and humanities concentrations, and provide a
common introductory experience that can be shared by a large number of
students. In particular, the report reveals the impending introduction of three
humanities frameworks courses, to debut this fall: The Art of Listening, The Art of Reading, and The Art of Looking. These “pre-disciplinary” courses are intended
to introduce students to fundamental problems, histories, and critical methods
through intensive study of exemplary texts (such as the critical essays of
Roland Barthes), sounds, images and objects. The report also calls for the
development of a full-year arts and humanities survey course for freshman and
sophomores, to be offered in 2014-15.

All these courses, and a few other divisional arts and
humanities offerings, says the report, should count for concentration credit.
Furthermore, to bolster the retention of likely humanities concentrators, the
report suggests improved advising and outreach, and enhanced coordination and
collaboration among clusters of freshman seminars in the arts and humanities.
Looking further ahead, the report suggests developing internships that show
students the desirability of humanities degrees, both for jobs and for graduate
study (half of admitted medical-school students, for example, have concentrated
in one of the humanities), and the facilitation of humanities study as a
secondary field, in combination with physics or chemistry, for example, perhaps
using the new introductory courses as a foundation for such study.

The curriculum working group’s second major recommendation involves
improving integration within the division of arts and humanities itself by
reviving an arts and humanities section that aggregates the division’s classes in
the course offerings:

Reviving an Arts
and Humanities section starting in 2013-14 will facilitate cross-divisional
teaching and offer greater visibility to courses that transcend the cultural
and/or disciplinary boundaries into which departments are divided. By encouraging cross-disciplinary teaching initiatives that
reach beyond our Division and even beyond FAS, this new Arts and Humanities
section will enable our Division to promote intellectual exchange and a more
active culture of collaboration across the University.

Collectively “these reports,” wrote Sorensen in a letter
accompanying their release, “in pinpointing
some clear historical trends and definitively separating facts from untested
assumptions, provide a sturdy foundation on which to base our future efforts.
Though varied in tack and emphasis, these efforts share a common goal: the
collective assertion of the humanities as an essential foundational element in
American liberal arts education.”